Sale signifies a new era for the Warner family in Tuscaloosa

There's still a Warner in the top position, just as there will still be a Gulf States Paper in Tuscaloosa.

But Thursday's announced sale of manufacturing assets underlines that, for the venerable Tuscaloosa company, things are changing in a big way.

Jack Warner, boss and public face of Gulf States for almost 40 years, retired from day-to-day operations in 1995. While he remains a board member and consultant, his son Jonathan Westervelt Warner Jr. is chairman of the board.

The privately held Gulf States Paper Corp., founded in 1884 by the Warner and Westervelt families, consolidated operations in Tuscaloosa in 1929 after opening a paper mill here.

In 1902, Warner's grandfather, Herbert E. Westervelt, patented a machine that created the flat-bottomed, folding grocery bag that is still in use today. It opened with a flick of the wrist, hence the name E-Z Opener Bag Co.

E-Z Opener reincorporated in Tuscaloosa as Gulf States Paper, setting up the first modern pulp and paper mill in the state, drawn by the rich water sources and Southern white pine.

Herbert's daughter Mildred Westervelt Warner ran the business through the Depression and into the 1950s, when her son Jack, a graduate of Washington & Lee University and commissioned officer in the U.S. Army from 1941-45, serving in the Burma Theater during World War II, took over.

As a youth, Jack Warner apprenticed in various areas of the family business. After World War II, he headed production and sales before becoming executive vice president in 1950. He was elected president in 1957, succeeding his mother.

From 1959 to 1984, he served as president and chairman of the board; from '84 to 1994 he served as chairman and CEO of Gulf States, retiring from day-to-day management Jan. 1, 1995.

Jack, 88, built Gulf States from a single mill with a single product into one of the nation's largest privately held forest-product companies, diversifying into wood, paperboard and packaging products produced and distributed around the United States.

The Tuscaloosa paper mill closed in 1978, but manufacturing operations continued in North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere in Alabama.

Jack Warner married the former Elizabeth Butler of Jacksonville, Fla., in 1939. They have two sons, J.W. (Jon) Warner Jr. (the current chairman of the board) and David Turner Warner, and three grandchildren.

Gulf States signed a letter of intent recently to sell NorthRiver Yacht Club to the club's members. Gulf States and Jack Warner started the club in the 1970s.

Adding to his mother's acquisitions in decorative art -- ornate French clocks, neoclassical and Duncan Phyfe furniture and silver serving pieces, some by Paul Revere -- Jack Warner began gathering the massive American art collection now held at the Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art, which is located on the NorthRiver grounds